


First Things First

by Freebooter4Ever



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Could Be Canon, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:14:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22674646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Freebooter4Ever/pseuds/Freebooter4Ever
Summary: After Eugene and Snafu first meet in the K company tent, Snafu convinces Ack Ack to give the newest relpacement coconut duty while on Pavuvu. Snafu goes with him to supervise and bonding ensues amidst rotten fruit.
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge
Comments: 10
Kudos: 27





	First Things First

Snafu wants to get a rise out of Sledge from the very first minute he meets him.

Eugene Sledge is a pain. He whines like a baby, has never known hardship, and has the most delicate fucking eyes Snafu has ever seen. Fortunately, by now Snafu is comfortable enough with discomfort that adding one more pain in his ass to an already long list of them is negligible. In fact, most of the time Snafu manages to forget Sledge exists. Convenient, since he won't exist much longer anyway.

When Snafu does pay attention to the ginger haired replacement, it's usually to either draft him into a work party or leer intimidatingly at Sledge while he is doing drills.

Snafu's theory goes something like this: if he antagonizes Sledge enough, eventually the boy will break. He doesn't know what breaking Sledge will accomplish. Except that he wants to see it happen. Not broken like how Snafu feels, but broken as in pushed to the point where he cracks Sledge's carefully well behaved exterior. Just a tiny bit. Just enough to see him twitch. And to get Sledge to look back at him. There is a certain thrill to having Sledge turn his judgemental brown eyes on Snafu. The boy says more in his stern silence than he ever says aloud.

Perhaps that's why Snafu is drawn to this green Boot more than the others. Sledge never says much. He certainly doesn't talk back or argue. He sullenly accepts everything Snafu throws at him. And in return he looks up to Snafu and the other veterans with slightly awed eyes. Admiration can be addicting. 

It's probably what it would be like to have a dog. But only if he knew that dog was gonna die in a week once combat starts. Doesn't even give them a year in dog terms.

There is a boyish innocence to Sledge that Snafu hasn't known himself since age twelve. It simultaneously annoys Snafu and brings out the fiercely protective older brother in him. Maybe he's just used to taking care of fragile, delicate things. He still remembers the day his sister was born. Snafu was eight then. There was little celebration, they could barely feed one kid, no one knew how they were going to feed another.

After his parents were gone, it fell on him to feed his sister. She was four, and all he could afford to give her was mashed vegetables in cans. It stank. The baby food Sledge's mother mails to him every week is more appetizing. Sledge's baby food is colorful, and carefully preserved in jars with twine around the lids to keep it that way.

Snafu is the only man in their company who doesn't tease Sledge about the baby food. He understands you don't joke about food, even if the others don't get it. And for all that Sledge act's embarrassed by the jars, Snafu still sees him eating their contents in the privacy of his own tent.

"Can't let it go to waste," Sledge tells him when he catches Snafu's head peering in through the tent flap.

Snafu notices these things about Sledge because he's begun keeping an eye on the boy. At any given point in his life Snafu apparently needs someone to take care of. And Eugene Sledge can't even open a ration can. He's as helpless as the baby food might suggest.

The weekly food is what clues Snafu in on how rich Sledge's family is. Who else can afford to mail packages all the way to the pacific so damn often?

Sledge is no baby though. He's the best shot in the company, apart from Snafu himself. Probably better, if Snafu is honest. Sledge's skill as a rifleman comes from careful study, and Snafu watches him apply his expert aim to every drill they put the new Boots through. Snafu's talent is less adaptable, and more about desperation, and an uncanny ability to hit _anything_ that moves with _anything_ he wants - if he is determined enough. No doubt Sledge would call Snafu's abilities "natural" while Sledge is clearly a practiced marksman.

The boy's one weakness is clearly visible every time Snafu looks at him - there isn't a single blemish earned from practical experience on Sledge's body. And it's irritating as hell.

Especially when Snafu himself is forced to spend thirty minutes in his bunk every morning spreading some flower oil shit all over the open sores covering his feet and armpits. It always makes him late for breakfast, and he always gets the dregs.

Snafu's sores are everywhere and they make themselves known at random times during the day. Lately every time he sits, a dull persistent pain spreads out from his left butt cheek and radiates up his back. It feels like a bruise, or like he tore a muscle somewhere in there. If he sits a certain way, it feels fine, but most days the only comfortable position is sprawled flat on his side. His constant state of aching leaves him irritable and in a sour mood.

Most of the replacements are smart enough to avoid him during these times. Not Sledge. Snafu watches pain free Sledge sit down comfortably next to him at meals or on the beach and he seethes with envy. And Sledge still has the gall to complain about the food or the smell or the heat; him with his pain free life.

Sledge's refusal to avoid Snafu, as well as Sledge's dogged determination to do the right thing at all times, means Snafu takes particular pleasure in assigning him the worst work details. Sledge never turns them down, and he always finishes them. Hidden underneath Sledge's naivete is a strong willed stubborn streak, mostly expressed through sarcasm and heated looks, that when given rise, makes Snafu's blood run hot and his mouth go dry.

So when Ack Ack announces to Snafu that they need to find _someone_ to clear the southern beach of coconuts, Snafu takes him at his word and orders exactly _one_ person to follow him out with a cart.

That person is Sledge.

Sledge stays silent during their walk to the beach. It takes the whole morning, even though they leave camp at dawn. Snafu strolls beside the cart, setting the pace while Eugene pushes from behind. Snafu can feel Eugene's eyes glaring daggers into his back the whole way there.

Sledge is perfectly aware coconut duty is a daunting task for a dozen men, let alone one, and that Snafu might have finally found an impossible task for him.

Snafu smirks, slows his walk even more, and lights another cigarette. He twists around to look behind him and offers his smoke to Sledge. Sharing is the least Snafu can do after being responsible for putting Sledge through this tedium.

Sledge shakes his head, refusing the cigarette, and presses his lips tight in an exasperated grimace.

Snafu shrugs, and continues walking.

When they reach the beach, it's not as full of coconuts as it could be. Snafu surveys the area and feels hopeful. They might actually stand a chance at clearing this.

Sledge, however, stares at the beach in dismay. He fails to appreciate how lucky he is. He did not see the ground at base camp before the marines arrived. He did not smell the stench kicked up by hundreds of rotten coconuts when the marines tried to move them.

Snafu knocks the cart's brake down with his foot and buries it in the sand. He drops his extra pack of rations for the day, and then sprawls across the ground. He can't sit for fear of triggering his ass pain, so instead he kicks his feet out and lies down, very careful to stay on his right side. Using a bundle of ferns for a backrest, he happily settles in with his cigarette and stolen flask of alcohol, and prepares to watch the show.

It's immediately obvious that this is the first time Sledge has been stuck with coconut detail. He scoops the coconuts from the beach carelessly, rather than treating them as if they were explosives set to go off.

What an idiot.

Snafu rests his hands behind his head, relaxes, and waits. Sure enough, not ten minutes later, Sledge hits an especially rotten one. The coconut explodes in a shower of stinking watery milk.

The expression on Sledge's face is worth every wasted minute of Snafu's time.

Sledge stands in a small circle of wet sand with liquid dripping down his face and staining his shirt, and Snafu howls.

He laughs so hard he falls onto his back. It sends a spike of discomfort up his spine, but the pain in his ass is negligible compared to the indignant rage coming off Sledge in waves.

Sledge's expression remains frozen in grim determination. He takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and scoops the coconut guts out of the sand with his bare hands. It's an impressive feat. Even Snafu and his buddies only ever got about half the rotten bits up, the rest they guiltily covered over with sand. Forgotten coconuts buried and still rotting underground probably account for the perpetual stink of the camp.

Sledge carries the guts over to the cart, steadfastly ignoring the way they're squishing down his arms, and dumps everything in.

From then on he starts being more careful when handling the coconuts.

"You missed one," Snafu points out an hour into the work detail.

As luck would have it, the coconut Snafu points to happens to be so rotten that when Sledge brushes it with his fingertips there is an awful crack and the thing deflates like a basketball under a car tire. The guts and milk make a kind of pile in the sand. 

Snafu laughs so hard his throat goes dry. He takes a deep sip from his stolen flask, and fails to notice Sledge slowly advancing on him from the right. Snafu continues drinking, oblivious, until suddenly he's drenched in mush. He can feel it land in his hair, on his shoulders, sliding down his back - cool, wet, and hard.

Snafu immediately launches to his feet, chest out, chin aggressively high, fully prepared to fight back.

Before he can get the first punch in, Sledge laughs.

It stops Snafu in his tracks. Sledge laughing is probably one of the eight wonders of the world. His entire body wiggles, like a happy puppy. His mouth spreads into a toothy, wide 'V' shape, and damn if the whole effect doesn't irritate the heck out of Snafu just by how endearing it is.

Snafu refuses to be charmed by a pretty smile. He hunkers down and lunges straight into Sledge's torso. The tackle knocks Sledge off his feet and sprawls him backward across the sand. Snafu doesn't want to actually hurt Sledge, he just wants to get him to quit squirming so much.

Unfortunately pinning someone down in shifting sand proves very difficult. At some point Sledge gets the upper hand and wrestles Snafu onto his back. Snafu responds by punching him in the gut, and while Sledge is wheezing, he shoves Sledge over, straddles his waist, and pins Sledge's arms to his chest.

Sledge jerks his knee up on reflex and it hits Snafu in the butt squarely on whatever bruise or wound Snafu's got back there. Snafu winces in pain and slumps, releasing his grip on Sledge.

"Shit, sorry!" Sledge half sits up. He grabs Snafu's wrists to steady him and looks genuinely concerned.

They end up staring at each other. Both of them covered in coconut milk, half of it drying in the heat, the other half mixed with wet sand and sticking all over their skin. The sand and milk combination is grainy and painful, and Sledge's exposed skin is already pink from some kind of rash. And Snafu is seated right over Sledge's crotch, which is….

_'Sledgehammer'_ is a word Snafu's mind helpfully supplies out of the blue, as if he's playing his own personal word association game.

'Shit' is the next word he thinks of.

A glob of coconut falls out of Snafu's hair, slides down his nose, and lands with a splat on Sledge's chest.

Sledge's shoulders start to shake with suppressed laughter.

Snafu dares to grin.

Sledge takes that as an okay to start guffawing. He throws his head back on the sand, drops Snafu's wrists, and covers his face with his hands to try to control his mirth.

The laughter is contagious. Snafu falls forward and drops his forehead against Sledge's chest, giggling uncontrollably.

Eventually Snafu calms down enough to take a heaving breath. And promptly fills his nostrils with the most nauseatingly sweet smell in existence. He groans and shoves off Sledge's chest, standing up in one smooth motion.

"Fuck, you smell," Snafu complains.

"Same to you, Shelton," Sledge says, still grinning like a fool. He gets to his feet and awkwardly tries to brush off the drying mixture of coconut guts and sand on his belly.

"Better go wash that off. You're all sticky like you just..." Snafu mimes a suggestive gesture with his hands.

"Don't be crude," Sledge sighs and rolls his eyes as he turns to walk down the beach.

"We better not wash together, people will talk," Snafu taunts. He follows Sledge to the water anyway. He stops at the edge and watches while Sledge strips and wades in. Sledge brings along only his shirt, and tries to scrub it clean on the rocks.

"As if," Sledge scoffs, "Everyone has seen the pin up girls tacked to your bunk, Shelton. We all know your tastes. Skinny and red haired ain't it."

"The pin up girls are just friends," Snafu says with a devilish grin, "Swear it on my mother's grave."

Sledge turns around sharp and looks back at Snafu. Sledge opens his mouth to speak, changes his mind, closes it, and then opens it again. "I wasn't aware you had any friends, Shelton," Sledge retorts.

"One of the girls taught me how to dance when I was thirteen," Snafu brags.

"How to _dance_ , huh?" Sledge raises an eyebrow skeptically.

"The jitterbug," Snafu extrapolates proudly.

"Another thing unfit for polite society," Sledge says amiably. He starts to wring out his soaking wet shirt.

"Ohhhhh," Snafu crows, "You're one of _them_."

"Them?"

" _Polite society_ folk," he says the words in the same way you would point out a dead skunk - if you've seen it, it's probably already too late, and you'll carry the smell on you for ages, "AKA people who don't dance, don't drink, don't smoke, don't _live_ except to do what everyone else asks of them."

"Not exactly," Sledge says, slightly defensively.

"Is that why you carry a bible? To impress your _polite society_ folk?" Snafu taunts.

"Yes," Sledge says, "That, and for writing."

"Writing love letters to all the girls whose hearts you broke because you were too busy being in _polite society_ to fuck em?" Snafu asks with a grin.

He's expecting it when Sledge's newly cleaned wet shirt slaps him in the face. The snap of the fabric stings. But Snafu's grin remains.

"Wash your face, Shelton. You've got coconut on your eyebrow," Sledge says, "And wash your mouth out too, while you're at it."

Snafu peels the shirt from his face, but instead of dropping it next to the rest of Sledge's clothes, he wrings the water out of it and puts it on.

He then wades into the water till he reaches the same depth as Sledge.

"Why are you wearing my shirt?" Sledge asks, looking amused.

"Misplaced mine," Snafu shrugs. He dives under the water and scrubs at his scalp to get the coconut out of his hair.

After their swim, they end up collapsing on the beach with Sledge's pile of clothes between them. The hot sun dries Sledge quickly. Snafu takes a while longer, his dungarees and boots sopping wet. Neither of them mind the wait.

Sledge clears his throat, "I didn't know your mom was…."

"Dead," Snafu supplies.

"Sorry…" Sledge says.

"It's okay, she's sending me care packages like yours, they're all just...waiting for me. Up there," Snafu jokes, "In fact, I'll probably be picking them up soon."

Sledge doesn't smile.

They mostly remain in silence, even after Snafu finally pulls himself out of the sand and starts scooping the last few coconuts into the cart. Sledge jauntily hops up, drags his pants back on, and starts to help.

It's Sledge who breaks the silence.

"Snafu, why don't you go to sick call?" he asks. He dumps the final coconut into the cart and then leans his elbows over the edge. He rests his chin on his folded hands, and the sun shines through his freshly chopped regulation length hair. It looks soft and clean. Snafu bets if he ran his fingers through it, he wouldn't hit a single snag. Snafu can't remember the last time he combed his own hair. Or even saw a comb.

And Sledge stands there innocently, stinking of coconuts, oblivious.

'What do you mean?" Snafu asks, after he realizes he's been staring.

"I know you have sores. You've been favoring your right side every time you sit down. But you never go to sick call. You always go off on your own to do it," Sledge says, "I was wondering why."

Snafu snorts, "The only assholes I trust to treat my ass are the medics and myself. And the medics have more important shit to see to. Which leaves me."

"And me," Sledge offers.

Snafu rolls his eyes and stubs out his smoke on one of the coconuts beside Sledge's face. Sledge coughs. He lets go of the cart and moves around it to stand in front of Snafu.

"My father's a physician," Sledge explains.

"A what?" Snafu sneers at him.

"My father's a doctor," Sledge says with confidence, "I have plenty of experience handling patients, even reluctant ones. You can trust me."

Snafu eyes him suspiciously. "A doctor?" he says, "...no wonder you're all…" He gestures to everything Sledge is.

It's Sledge's turn to cast his eyes to the sky. But while doing so he also produces a brand new bottle of genshin violet from his pocket. It's fancier than the kind the Marines get - got a decorative label and everything.

"Where'd you find that?" Snafu asks.

"My father sent it," Sledge shrugs.

"And you're offering to use it on me?"

"I'm sure they'll send another," Sledge replies.

Snafu holds his breath for a second and ponders the reality of living in a world where there is a certainty of things being replenished when they run out. 

"All right," Snafu agrees, "Come back to the tent with me then."

They return to camp with the cart in tow. And since it's chow time, no one is in the K company tent but them. A relief, because the sore turns out to be right under the crease of his left butt cheek. 

Sledge turns his back on Snafu while Snafu takes his clothes off. Snafu holds to no such propriety. He shakes his legs out of his pants and stands in the middle of the tent, bare as the day he was born. Sledge still doesn't turn around. 

"Where do you want me, doc?" Snafu asks the back of Sledge's head. He can _feel_ Sledge's eye roll. "Better be careful or them peepers will roll right out of your head," Snafu warns. He's nervous. His accent is getting thicker.

Sledge digs through a first aid kit for clean cotton swabs. "Lie down on a cot," he says.

Snafu follows orders, lying on his back and kicking his feet up to try to look relaxed despite the discomfort his bruise is causing.

Sledge finally turns around and gets a good look, "Other way around, Snafu."

Snafu rolls over onto his front and pillows his head in his arms, smirking.

"I'm ready," Snafu says without sounding ready at all.

"Sorry if my hands are warm," Sledge says. He sits on the edge of the cot, next to Snafu's knee.

"I'm always cold, it'll even out," Snafu quips.

Sledge holds Snafu's skin steady with his left hand, and gently - so gently! - dabs at the sore underneath his butt cheek with the oily swab.

"If you left this much longer, it might've gotten ugly," Eugene warns.

"Hmm," Snafu says.

"This week, when everybody else is at sick call, I'll meet you here and help you with this," Sledge continues.

Snafu nods. He sucks in his lip to keep from making noise. 

Meanwhile Sledge takes his sweet time painting Snafu's sore ass.

Snafu tries to be patient with the process, but spreading the ointment seems to be taking longer than usual. Snafu is so numb to pain at this point he hardly notices the slight pressure of the cotton swab. It's actually kinda nice, he eventually decides - having Sledge's steady hands gripping his upper thigh. Snafu could almost fall asleep.

"Pain feeling any better?" Sledge asks.

"Kinda hard to feel anything," Snafu mumbles in reply, "Why don't you kiss it? I heard that makes it better."

A sharp dig into the skin right next to the sore makes Snafu almost jump off the cot.

"Sorry," Sledge says without sounding like it, and he finishes bandaging Snafu's wound.

Snafu grunts. As much a pain in the ass as Sledge can be, Snafu admits he feels a lot more comfortable with the soothing ointment on his open sore. If this works out, he hopes he'll be able to sit normally again before they're sent back to combat.

"Hey, Snafu?" Sledge breaks his reverie.

"Huh," Snafu grunts.

"No more coconuts," Sledge insists.

"Mmhmm," Snafu agrees.

For the next week, Sledge shows up at the exact same time every day and paints the genshin violet oil on Snafu's sores. And Snafu, true to his word, never pulls Sledge in for coconut duty ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> ok, i have a bunch of little half written short sledgefu stories like this that are semi entertwined, and all following fairly close to canon, so i thought i might try sharing one ^_^


End file.
